The Liberator's Day Off, (Part 9)

I awoke, rested, terrified, and famished, to find that I had been locally famous all day, and the only reason I wasn't being toured around on a publicity junket was that some mad artisan had actually succeeded in brewing a usable bathtub batch of panacea and diverted the admirers to this well-known known local savior like a tyranid hoard scenting undefended biomass.

I had been hauled by the scruff of my neck back into the role of 'Hero.'

Ciaphas Fossick. Hero of Lantonia. The Deliverer.

The only thing that made the experience at all tolerable was the knowledge that I had been left to sleep in a snug, defensible room next to my unconscious aide for the better part of the day. My rest was guarded, I discovered later, by both Specialist Rolan and Mechwright Paverick taking turns at the watch, as well as none other than Parker, the author of my unwanted fame.

At least, that's the gist of what Parker had said when he handed me two bugle special editions. Since he also handed me an extremely watery recaf, I let him live… at least until I read the news.

That masked menace had carried out his plan to perfection while Jameson had kept me hopping all night, reading and reviewing the astonishing array of Panacea processes his eclectic staff reporters had furiously penned. Each adaptation of the process used available resources that, they thought, might have a sliver of a chance at working. Half were garbage, the furious fancies of those who had no industrial experience whatsoever, the other quarter a fool's hope, but the rest…the Bugle's readership of possessed a frighteningly expert level of desperate innovation to rival Tesselon Kappa's horde of Borg, at least in the early days of the Liberation, and I resolutely refused to consider the long-term consequences of sanctioning the release of this bellicose burst of creativity upon yet another imperial planet.

Jona had showed me his call to action, and I had nothing further to add to it as the propaganda piece. Jona, for all his fractured sanity, knew his business and his people, and the only useful addition I could lend would be the official sanction of the commissariat, which I graciously gave despite the fact that I am not, in fact, an Imperial commissar.

As the night wore on, I reflected on the irony of being forced to do the role I'd been trained for. I consoled myself that Jona had obviously preferred to grab all the glory of delivering the announcement himself, and I had been relegated to the role of anonymous, nameless messenger, a bit part that suited me just fine.

Then that blasted wonder-boy Parker slipped his piece on page two.

It was all I could do to keep my face impassive as I read the hagiographic effusion capped by a horrifyingly professional, extremely eye-catching picture of me ripping a dagger out of my own chest. The Bugle staff even had the appalling effrontery to lavish their limited resources upon that particular image and print the damned thing in color.

My only consolation was that my face was so streaked with blood, dirt, and torn flesh at the time that it was very nearly unrecognizable, but I just knew the minute I saw it that Parker had created a space in every human mind in Viasalix for a Hero of Panacea, and then bodily shoved me into it. I had to admire the sheer ruthless professionalism of his frame-up, even as my bowels clenched in terror at what *else* his stealthy servoskulls might have recorded.

I did Parker the courtesy of demonstrating how a professional goes about having a complete lack of reaction, merely raising an eyebrow in mild, faintly amused interest as I carefully read over the paper. I concealed my horror at his fawning article with the ease of long practice, instead of showing my real feelings, which involved a three-way tussle between bellowing in rage, gibbering in panic, and whaling on the brat with the flat of my chainsword.

"Interesting." I mused finally. "How did the Governor react when you slipped this article into his second page without giving him a chance to edit it?" It was a guess, but a good one, I thought. The boy's prose was so purple it could qualify as tau blood, without either the bellicose authority or the focused experience Jameson brought to his writing. The whole thing could have stood to be trimmed down to half its length, too, ditching all the weird stuff about his uncle and at least three of the paragraphs detailing my little heart-ripping stunt.

He looked betrayed. "How did you know?"

I raised a tolerant eyebrow. "Experience, child." I said. "I'm sure you're quite the warrior- every surviving Lantonian has to be by now, to survive this chaos-tainted war." I yawned elaborately. "I'll let you, Peter Parker, pictcaster-at-large, investigate how many wars I've seen."

His attention sharpened further. "Tell me!" He demanded.

I laughed in his face, then shook the paper. "I doubt I'll have the time." I let my face settle into a tolerant smirk. "This is quite a starring role you've cast me in, a full-time duty quite apart from my duty to the commissariat, the Gaurd, and the Imperium. Morale is a precious thing, and you've just delegated so much of maintaining the morale of your folk to me." I gave him an ironic little bow. "You have put me at your people's service, so I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit too busy to have time for you."

His shoulders set, his fists clenched. I was rattling his cage, to be sure, and not just because I was enraged and wanted to strike back.

I was baiting him into threatening me, and when he did, if I'd read him right, he wouldn't be able to resist twisting my arm with every detail of my activities his servoskull spies had recorded. Specifically, I was fishing for whether he'd recorded enough to get me immediately shot by any guard forces that relieved Viasalix for the crime of impersonating a Commissar.

"Information wants to be free!" He declared abruptly. "Viasalix deserves the light of truth! You are the Emperor's light! The truth is in our darkest hour, you came, and delivered us!"

Aww frack. The genuine fervor in his voice told me that either he hadn't seen anything incriminating or he so badly wanted to believe that a savior had come that he was disregarding all evidence to the contrary in his haste to shove me into that role.

"It's merely my duty." I said, gently. "That's a great responsibility I have been given, along with the great powers vested in me as a commissar."

I noted how he froze at the phrase 'great responsibility,' and hunched as if struck at the phrase "great power." Well, it wasn't as if I'd said them at random, and it looked like my close, horrified reading his article paid off in picking out the phrasings that were actual handles on his character.

"And you- unilaterally, I presume? Since you obviously didn't consult Jona, and certainly didn't petition me- chose to use that power to heap all the hope of Lantonia…on me." I fixed him with an ironic gaze. "That's quite the command-level decision for a reporter-at-large to make. The most interesting question is…why did you not entrust your rightful leader, the Governor, J. Jonas Jameson Worden, with this choice?"

His shoulders hunched even further, and I wondered how young he really was under all that personal protective equipment. I was undecided between a very precocious 9 or a malnourished and extremely immature 23.

"He's so tired." He muttered. "He needs rest."

I raised an eyebrow even further. "True enough." I agreed. "Tell me." I said, with dispassionate kindness. "Did attempting to deliver all his power, authority, and position, giftwrapped, to an unknown stranger that you personally witnessed nearly under the influence of Nurgle's mind-controlled creatures bare hours before, result in giving him less work to do?"

If the child hunched over any further he'd be a turtle, I decided.

"No." He muttered.

"And where is the editor right now?"

"Working." Parker muttered.

"And why are you not assisting him?"

Parker's voice was an even smaller mutter. "He said I was a damned masked menace and told me to make myself useful. That if I was so keen to see someone rest, I should guard yours and keep everyone from disturbing you."

"And you obeyed him?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Of course!" His posture practically radiated offense. "He's the Governor!"

"And nobody tried to get past you?"

"No." The bewilderment that I would even ask sent a tingle through my palms again. He was defensive about his writing and his moral decisions. His body language was an open book of his self-doubts and indecision on that score.

He had no doubts about his ability to keep people out. On a hellish plague world like this, guarding me against horde of hopeful battle-hardened veterans who had been told I was their hope of heaven and the emperor's anointed savior…that had to mean Parker had to be one hell of a fighter.

I decided I had no intention of ever crossing swords with Peter Parker. Best keep running rings around him in the arena of words.

I smiled mirthlessly. "I have excellent news for you. Your usurpation of your governor's authority comes from youthful ignorance and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, rather than malice or active treason, which means your actions are merely a dangerously annoying mess your superiors must clean up, rather than a deadly threat to all you hold dear. Nevertheless, It is fortunate that you did not succeed in making me your commander, because it is my job to hold my subordinates responsible for their actions. And this- ." I slapped page two of the paper against my palm, making a satisfying 'snap,'" was wildly irresponsible. A massive overreach of your authority. If you were a guardsman of mine, I would have every right to shoot you for insubordination." For a fraction of a second, I gave him a #1 commissarial glare, the iron-faced expression for presiding over tribunals, condemnations, and executions. Then smoothed my face back into a bland irony. "But I am not your commander."

I leaned back against a wall with studied nonchalance. "Keep guarding my rest." I said, "I have pressing duties to attend to, and then,". I fixed him with a gimlet eye, "we'll have a little review and critiquing session of your latest attempt at a propaganda piece, as well as a *full review* of all the picts you intend to distribute in these 'watch parties' you advertised. Commissar is an advisory and counseling position, after all, and you clearly need advice." I let my smile grew briefly cruel, then deliberately and elaborately turned my back, appearing to drop him from my attention.

It helped that I did have a very pressing and worrying duty. Jurgen. He still hadn't awoken, and I knew enough about the long-term care of immobile people to know that, in the absence of regular doses Panacea, someone needed to start caring for his body in very specific ways.

So I did.

The most important part of nursing in particular or caring for someone in general is that you have to pay attention to them to the exclusion of everything else. They, whoever they are, are the most important job at hand, and you have to set aside everything else and treat them as such. This is true whether you're taking care of somebody hurt, consoling a child, enjoying the company of cronies, or fighting in enemy. Reminded of this, I set aside everything else and frakking well cared for Jurgen.

First, I said, "Time to get up, Jurgen. I'm going to shake your shoulder and try and wake you now." I pitched my voice with the sort of firm confidence I used to get an oversleeping Zeraya out of bed, then sank to my knees beside him. His nose gave an odd little twitch, and I felt a rising hope, but he didn't respond further. Then I put a calm, firm hand on his shoulder and gently shook it.

It was the safest way to wake a combat veteran without getting stabbed or shot: let their unconscious mind hear you coming, say what you are going to do to, and then, carefully, do it.

I shook, and felt my spirits rise when I felt his shoulder twitch under my hand, then disappointed when he lay still. It was a hopeful sign of returning consciousness, however.

"It's me," I said quietly. "Ciaphas Fossick." Seemingly unconscious people do have ears, and he would need to know my fake identity if, no, I corrected myself fiercely, when he woke up. I shook his shoulder firmly again, but got no further reaction from my aide.

Now, I don't, generally, think of myself in terms of being a trained medicae. Still, when you are parenting a human shapeshifter whose destructive power is only limited by her interest in controlling herself, and have to find ways to explain to her how and why her own body works without revealing the utter horror you feel at her capability to eat whole planetary populations, you go and pick the brains of every medicae with an utterly unruffled bedside manner you can and have them train you.

Not to mention spending the last half century in open war against Nurgle. Sheer self-interest has dictated I'd acquired enough skills to qualify as a lay medicae at the very least.

More accurately, I'm a trained medical orderly comparable to Sororitas nurse, and Jurgen would need one. Orderlies provide sustained, ongoing, daily support for whatever the body they are caring for can't do itself.

"It's time to do our A, B, Cs, Jurgen," I said steadily. "You need care. I will start with 'A' and check your airways."

I watched his chest, which was, hearteningly enough, rising and falling on its own, though not very strongly. I tilted his head back to help clear the airways and fluffed the nest of blankets to provide more robust support under his neck. Much more of this, and I would have to roll him him on his side, in the position you put drunks until they don't choke on their own vomit. It was a position I knew rather well from the early days of Liberation since Jurgen had arranged me that wary several times after I drank myself to sleep.

"Now let's do 'B,' your breathing, Jurgen," I said. "Slow and steady, very good, man." I talked conversationally as if he were awake and about to hand me a cup of recaff. That he was breathing at all was a plus. He didn't seem to be struggling to inhale or exhale, either. I didn't much like the pattern of his breathing, but an in-depth observation of that would have to wait, since the crusted saliva around his mouth told a story of incipient dehydration that I didn't like in the slightest.

"I'm going to check your circulation now," I murmured to my aide, "starting with your left hand."

I picked up his hand, and noted with worry the pale fingers and white nail beds. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary for a Valhallen, but after a dose of panacea they ought to have been a healthier pink for weeks. I pressed my thumbnail lightly onto one of his nail beds, and noticed that not only did it turn whiter, it stayed white for longer than it should have if his blood were circulating as it should. I also noticed they were grimy, something that I knew, if Jurgen had any consciousness at all, would be making my fastidious aide's skin crawl with the terrible reminders of being helplessly mired in a prison made of his own filth by nurgle cultists.

"Nicely done, Jurgen, your capillaries are circulating well." One of the key components of an excellent bedside manner is to appear completely at ease with whatever state you find the other person in, mind, body, and soul, but most especially body. Nobody helpless and hurting wishes to be looked upon with horror or disgust, and I counted it as possibly the most important lie I'd ever told learning to perfect the appearance of remaining completely unbothered by all the revolting things Zeraya had turned into, voluntarily and involuntarily, during her adolescence.

Seemingly unconscious people still have working ears. Ears never stop responding to sound: it's only the consciousness behind them that stops working. So I assumed Jurgen was listening as I went on talking him through 'D' for disability- what was his level of consciousness? I ran down the 'how disabled is his consciousness' checklist. He failed 'A for 'alert'', 'V' for responsive to voice, and had a very, very mild reaction to 'P' for pain response when I pinched him. Though fortunately, the very mild reaction meant he was, at least, not completely unresponsive.

I checked him over as courteously and thoroughly as I could without undressing him. That would have to wait until I myself was clean, because the last thing my aide needed was to be pawed over by someone as rancid and bloody as I was after the last few days of battle. Especially if he was at all conscious: out of respect for his hideous experiences, if nothing else, I owed it to him to be squeaky clean when I tended him.

I decided that I didn't like his state of unconsciousness, so I put him in the rescue position. I rolled him onto his side, the arm on the bottom extended perpendicular to his body to stop him from rolling over onto his face, his top arm bent and hand tucked under his head to cushion it. I took care to position his bottom leg slightly bent, but mostly straight, with his body, his top leg extended out in front of him like he was about to take a step up on a staircase built for Astartes. I also cursed myself for not detailing one of my putative minions from the Kastrean 73rd to keep a better eye on that during their night watch. Jurgen usually took care of such details for me, or any one of my frighteningly competent subordinates while I was busy seeing to the wider picture. But now, it was just me, and I needed to remember an even older set of skills harkening back to my underhive days for taking care of details myself.

Getting Panacea everywhere I could on this plague world *had* been critical, but I could have spared at least five frakking minutes to check on Jurgen before now.

I stripped out of my bloody clothes, rousted my two minions, ordered Parker to find me the means to do a proper wash up, and generally scrubbed myself like I was a medicae about to do field surgery. I made my minions scrub as well, and specifically detailed Paverick to laundry duty, laundering both my own clothes, my stolen Commessar outfit, and then had her launder her and rolan's clothing as well. This process let me inventory the health and status of the Kastreans, the health and status of my own body, and prepped me to devote the proper amount of attention to cleaning and tending to Jurgen.

Parker I used as a gofer, and I must admit he did the job well, disappearing and reappearing shortly with whatever I demanded, or sending one of his servoskulls if it was light enough.

The upshot of this focused care on Jurgen was, apart from barking orders, I completely ignored Parker's existence, his manipulation, and his cock-up. For all he could see, after reaming him out, I appeared to utterly dismiss him from my attention and from any importance in my calculations apart from running him around.

That's a rather important component when giving a youngster with a ridiculous amount of power an arse-chewing. Yes, they need correction, but the quickest way to undo whatever good shouting at them over their misdeeds would do would be to show any fear, and it's another mistake to let them stew.

I may be scared shitless of Parker's unknown power, but showing any trace of it would be the quickest way to convince the kid that he was actually in charge.

If the youngster in question is the power-hungry type, they revel in the fact that they can bully you. Worse, though are the ones that are scared already of themselves and their own potency, because they will become even more scared once they realize that the person passing themself off as a responsible adult and authority over them had no control and no idea what the frak they were doing, either.

Parker, it turned out, was one of the latter. Shoving him into the role of gopher suited him, especially when it was obvious that I was ignoring him not because I was angry, but because I had way more important things to do than deal with the nonsense of someone upright and breathing on their own.

All in all, caring for, cleaning, supporting, and cross-training my two kastreans to be able to spell me when I wasn't available to hydrate, brush, and adjust the position of my aide took hours, hours which Jona took full advantage of to refocus the story of Lantonian Deliverance away from me and onto some cogboy that went by the cognomen 'Doctor Octopus.' The third edition of the Bugle came out trumpeting the victory of Doc's star-fission power generator doing some gravitation manipulations to compress something-or-other into the thingamabob with watercooling from some reservoir and the upshot is the mad cog managed to produce a respectable amount of Panacea- enough to start a vaccination campaign for the survivors to immunize themselves against the NurgRags that very night.

Jona himself managed to steal back the limelight, or rather, put himself firmly back in charge of his people, by organizing the immunization priority. I admired how Jona managed to both convince people to wait their turn and make them like it. I felt absolutely no need to step off the sideline he was clearly working hard at keeping me on after Parker's accidental attempt to hand me his job.

I did send Parker after for a couple doses of panacea so I could do a quality check. Yes, it did jump me and mine to the head of the line, but it was also thoroughly practical in that I was the only conscious person on the planet who could accurately and immediately judge its quality and likely effects without having to run specific, extensive, and time-consuming tests.

I sniffed it, then tasted. Yep. Panacea. Smells like heaven, tastes like hell, and fizzes slightly as it slaughters all the inimical bacteria in your mouth. There's a reason it's usually injected instead of taken orally, although some weirdos claim it's a delicacy.

Doc Ock's brew wasn't the best stuff I'd ever seen, but it would serve. I certainly couldn't make the stuff any faster or any better, not without an infrastructure that Lantonia no longer had or any of the resources I used to have in Slawkenberg.

I used another dose Jurgen, and was rewarded by a little sputter at the taste, and a slight improvement in the pinkness of his fingernails as he absorbed it, but that was all.

So, eventuallly, I had to find something else to do.

I decided the time had come to deal with Governor Jona and my mutual problem: the friendly neighborhood spy drone man, who, throughout the day, had apparently gotten bored with any pretense of being a regular human being and was currently standing on the ceiling.

I didn't bat an eye, but calmly observing the strangely lithe movements and the inexplicable ability to stick to walls, I reaffirmed my conviction that he would be fracking terrifying in a fight.

So I gave him homework. I made him rewrite his article three times, each time going for a different propaganda target. Most of all, I emphasized the ABCs: accuracy, brevity, clarity. Then I had him write a cover letter apologizing to the editor for his crimes against journalism in general and the editorial process in particular.

The apology worked to summon Jona, who looked like that odd cross between tired and wired that comes with both being in a fight for your life, yet so close to winning you can nearly taste the victory.

"Commissar Fossick, a moment of your time in private, if you please." He said, all nobility and manners. I inclined my head graciously. "Certainly."

He glanced at the ceiling, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "'Parker. Out.'"

Parker, for his part, obeyed with the speed of a well-scorched tail. I issued a similar, slightly less curt order to Paverick and Rolan, and they trailed out after Parker and shut the door.

Jona raised an eye at the unconscious Jurgen, and decided to be blunt. "Can your fellow keep a secret?"

"Yes." I said. "His security clearance is as high as mine, and I have absolute confidence in his discretion." Both statements which happened to be true- and Jona didn't need to know that it was because neither of us had a security clearance , since I was a heretic and Jurgen had been a civilian since his kidnapping.

"So, Commissar," Jona said, neutrally, waving a sheaf of papers I recognized: Parker's rewritten articles, with my addendums, observations, and corrections. "It appears you don't want my job, despite being quite the propagandist yourself."

I snorted. "Commissar is an advisory position." I said. "I am trained to advise officers how to better do their jobs. I am not trained to command. I would be a failure and heavily censured by the Commissariat if I overstepped, and, more importantly," I smiled, grimly. "Only a madman would want your job, under the circumstances. I certainly don't."

He snorted in appreciation. "You know, that's how the Governorship got dumped on me?" He asked. "I didn't want it. My mother turned her back on the whole festering lot of Lentonian nobility, and went and married my father. He wasn't even an officer in the PDF- just a company chef who saw some action and came back with a stack of medals. When the first war came, one of them assassinated my uncle, and it was a free-for all- civil war, insurrection, the whole nine yards- then the imperial sector martial council went and found me, the only blood relative who didn't want the damned job. They barged into my offices, grabbed me, and I thought I was under arrest for mouthing off about the martial council. But no, they frog-marched me to the palace, stuffed me in the royal chair and hailed me Governor."

"It looks like they found the right man for the job."

He snorted even more fiercely. "Don't I know it. It's not hard to be better than my relatives. A month later my cousin released the NurgRag plague, though it took a year or more for me to catch on to what was happening, after the occupation force had withdrawn. " He eyed me. "I didn't want the job, but it's mine, and none of my relatives are alive to argue the point. And I'm not handing it over to you, in case you had any doubt."

"I'm not at all inclined to take it." I said. "Deliveryman suits me just fine, and my duty demands I return to my regiment as soon as practicable."

"Glad that's clear." Jona leaned back, pose relaxing fractionally. "Advisory role, eh?" He tapped Parker's edited articles. "Some decent advice here, although some is unsuited to Lentonia. Do you have advice for me?"

"Get Parker on side and keep him there." I said, returning bluntness for bluntness. "He's trying to do your job for you, and he's undermining you every time he does it." I favored him with a stern look. "And you do him, yourself, and your people no favors every time you let him get away with it." I cocked my head at him. "What is Parker to you, anyway?"

Jona snorted. "What isn't he? We've been trying to sort that for years, ever since I married his Uncle Ben."

"…The Uncle Ben he has as a servoskull?"

"Yes." Jona looked grim. "And wasn't that a mess and a half. Uncle Ben raised him after his parents died, see. Ben married an artisan woman so Parker would have a mother, but Ben really wasn't inclined to women and it showed, and Mae was…well, it didn't last long, that's the best that could be said. Then I married Ben, and Parker and I butted heads for years. Right up until Ben got shot at one of Peter's wrestling matches. We grieved him together, and it wasn't how I wished we'd learn to get along, but I had to take what I could get. I do my best to raise the boy, but Ben was always far more parental. Parker refused to wrestle after that and started was going out and getting into fights with gangers. I hired him at the paper when I got tired of crossing swords with him over his freelance vigilante activities, trying to trace the gang responsible for shooting Ben. Which, to be fair, I was doing, too, though I always figured on finding one of my relatives behind it, and when I did, eviscerate them in the presses and trust that some other relative would assassinate the murderer when they were down. Anyway, for Parker, my plan was I'd run him ragged pictcasting and gleaning news for me, and maybe running down a few leads on Ben's murder if he started getting antsy. That was before I knew that exhausting the kid was a fool's errand. I knew he was at least part ogryn, but I didn't know the half of it until the war and he didn't see the point in hiding what he could do anymore, which included not actually needing sleep. He got me and more than half the palace staff out in front of the zombie horde, and we rallied at the Bugle offices, and we've been in a damned war ever since. So…what is Parker to me? Stepson? Employee? Enemy? Ally? Bodyguard? Spy? Comrade-in-arms?" Jona waved a confused hand. "It's complicated."

"It really isn't." I said. "He's obviously your heir."

Jona blinked at me in bemusement. "My…heir."

"Under these circumstances? And with *that* past history?" I snorted. "You're the governor. You married his uncle. You all but adopted the kid. You kept parenting him after the man's death. You're the most powerful man on the planet, and you're the only remaining organized government on Lentonia. He's. Your. Heir."

I could see Jona's forehead furrowing, and pressed my point. "He said in his article the only one on Lentonia you were fooling with your 'J Jonah Jameson' routine was yourself, Governor. Him trying to pass off your duties onto me? That was a son, trying to protect an ailing father and seeing an emperor-sent opportunity to do so. But he did it at the expense of your governorship, based on the example you set."

"If you were doing your job, if you had claimed your governorship, if you had acknowledged the heir you obviously have and trained him, he would have been thinking in terms of authority, and dynasty, and power, and his attempt to protect you wouldn't have involved handing all your authority off to someone else, because then it would be clear to him that the workload would drop into his lap. And I don't see him as having the least interest in claiming it. "

I'd put a bug in Jona's ear, that's for certain. It was time to let the idea sink in, so I rounded off my little advisory with," That's how you get him on side. Make every insubordinate thing he's been doing official, because they are the sort of thing an heir ought to be doing, albeit doing a lot better. Then train him how to do it well, instead of this half-assed lash-up. Besides. I guarantee he'll hate the idea."

This won a wry chuckle from the Governor. "That he will." Then he chuckled again, a purely evil chortle he had to have practiced in a mirror. "You know, I think I know tomorrow's headline. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility."

That settled, the governor abruptly turned the conversation to several other things of importance- the progress of various panacea generation attempts, the mood of the Bugle readership, and what he knew of the remains of the Imperial strike force, which, I noted alertly, had probably landed on the continent on the far side of the planet.

I did mention another one or two little things the Governor could detail his heir to learn from me.

Then he staggered off to get some sleep.

Parker came in 5 minutes later, looking vaguely chastened, and as I eyed him, I realized the Governor was right: he didn't sleep. The kid didn't look the slightest bit weary. Worried, yes. Grieving? Yes, for a certainty. But tired did not seem to be in his makeup, and I really began to wonder exactly what sort of mutant he was as he chirped, "Governor Worden says to come work with you on the propaganda pict I promised in the article."

Finally, my real target for the day's machinations was coming together. "Certainly. I'm interested to see how you've used your great reporting power, Parker." I said, smiling grimly. "I think you owe me a showing."

He shifted, then muttered, "I spent so much time on the article. I haven't actually put one together yet. I meant to do it tonight."

Thank every power for that. I thought.

"Good." I said. "Then we can take the time to edit what you have into something effective."

And *that* is how I managed to pry loose every last reel of incriminating pictcasts from a suspicious, powerful, clever individual who, did he but know it, had captured everything he, his stepfather the Governor, and the imperium needed to be able to identify me and string me up by my thumbs and other anatomy as a warning to other traitorous commissars.

I even got him to thank me for my blatant destruction of critical evidence, because the reel we put together instead served Lentonia's goals much better, if I so do say so myself.

That night, before handing the watch off to Paverick and Rolan, I whistled as I administered another dose of Panacea to Jurgen.

It's in the little things that win people over, I thought to myself, tilting my aide's head to the right angle to be sure the gell-like substance went down his throat in a swallow instead of down his lungs.

It's all about showing that you care.